“Tasseography”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Tasseography (also known as tasseomancy or tassology) is a divination or fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments.

The terms derive from the French word tasse (cup), which in turn derives from the Arabic loan-word into French tassa, and the Greek suffixes -graph (writing), -logy (study of), and -mancy (divination).

Divination attempts to gain insight into the natural world through intuitive interpretation of synchronistic events.

History

The first inklings of Western tasseography can be traced to medieval European fortune tellers who developed their readings from splatters of wax, lead, and other molten substances. This evolved into tea-leaf reading in the seventeenth century, a short time after Dutch merchants introduced tea to Europe via trade routes to China.^[1]

Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England have produced a number of practitioners and authors on the subject, and English potteries have crafted many elaborate tea cup sets specially designed and decorated to aid in fortune-telling. Cultures of the Middle East that practice divination in this fashion usually use left-over coffee grounds from Turkish coffee/Lebanese coffee/Greek coffee turned over onto a plate.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

Method of tea-leaf reading

The Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology, Fifth Edition, Vol. 2, edited by J. Gordon Melton, notes:

Melton's described methods of pouring away the tea and shaking the cup are rarely seen; most readers ask the querent to drink the tea off, then swirl the cup.

It is traditional to read a cup from the present to the future by starting along the rim at the handle of the cup and following the symbols downward in a spiral manner, until the bottom is reached, which symbolizes the far future. Most readers see images only in the dark tea leaves against a white or neutral background; some will also read the reverse images formed by seeing the symbols that form in the white negative spaces, with a clump of dark leaves forming the background.

Certain western circles, consider it ill-advised for one to attempt tasseography using tea from a cut-open tea bag or to use a symbol dictionary. The reasons for these prohibitions are practical: tea-bag tea is cut too finely to form recognizable figures in the cup and tea-leaf reading has its own historic system of symbolism that does not correspond exactly with other systems, such as symbolic dream divination.

Fortune telling tea cups

Although many people prefer a simple white cup for tea leaf reading, there are also traditions concerning the positional placement of the leaves in the cup, and some find it easier to work with marked cups. Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the present, English and American potteries have produced specially decorated cup and saucer sets for the use of tea-leaf readers. Many of these designs are patented and come with instructions explaining their mode of use. Some of the most common were those that were given away with purchases of bulk tea.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

There are dozens of individual designs of fortune tellers' cups, but the three most common types are zodiac cups, playing card cups, and symbol cups.

Coffee reading

Coffee tasseography ({{lang-el|καφεμαντεία}}, {{lang-sr|гледање у шољу}}, {{lang-tr|kahve falı}}) is traditionally practiced using Turkish coffee or any method of coffee brewing that leaves grounds sitting at the bottom of the cup. Most of the coffee in the cup is consumed, but the sediments are left to settle. It is often believed that the querent should not read their own cup.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

There are several variations of coffee reading. They commonly require for the cup to be covered with the saucer and turned upside-down. In the Turkish tradition, coffee-readers often interpret the cup as being divided into horizontal halves: symbols appearing on the bottom half are interpreted as messages regarding the past, and symbols on the top half are messages regarding the future. The cup may also be interpreted in vertical halves to determine "yes" or "no" answers as well as the overall outcome of the events represented by symbols. For example, some fortune tellers may "read" symbols in the "left" half as "negative" events or outcomes, while symbols in the "right" half are "read" as "positive". Other readers may adhere to the belief that the cup is capable of revealing insights about the past, but it cannot predict events beyond forty days into the future. The saucer may also be incorporated into the reading. As with the cup, different variations exist for what the saucer represents, including whether the saucer sticking to the cup indicates a "positive" or "negative" outcome.^[2]

Some Romanian methods require that the sediments be swirled around until they cover the majority of the cup's inside surface. Other traditions, such as Turkish and Middle Eastern, do not require this swirling but do require that the cup be turned towards the querent in revealing the fortune. The coffee grounds are given time to dry against the cup before a reading begins.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

After a reading, the querent will be asked to "open the heart". This is done by placing the right thumb at the inside bottom of the cup and twisting clockwise slightly. This will leave an impression behind that the fortune teller will interpret as the querent's inner thoughts or emotions.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

In 2007, a coffee-reading fortune teller from Israel was charged with fraud, a crime punishable by up to five years in jail. The fortune teller in question was acquitted of the charges after the Israeli government deemed it too hard to prove she was knowingly "faking it".^[3]

Symbols

Many interpretations for symbols exist, but readers commonly focus on the color of the symbols. Since most cups used are white or ivory and the grounds are dark, symbols are formed from the strong, contrasting colors. White is considered a "good" symbol foretelling of generally positive things for the querent, while the grounds themselves are considered to form "bad" symbols.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

Symbols can be many things, including people, animals, and inanimate objects. Usually, the fortune teller will group nearby symbols together for a prediction.{{citation needed|date=December 2011}}

Notes

1. ^Guiley, Rosemary. "tasseomancy." The encyclopedia of witches, witchcraft, and wicca. 3rd ed. N.p.: Infobase Publishing, 2008. 341. Print.
2. ^"Your Future in a Cup of Coffee". Turkish Cultural Foundation. 2011. Web.
3. ^McClatchy DC: Coffee grounds brewed trouble for Israeli fortuneteller